Great stair climbs in the Los Angeles area

These stairs are among the 375 up to the Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Training for stair-climbing events isn't easy without stairs, which is why people in L.A. are at a disadvantage compared with those who live in 60-story apartment buildings in Manhattan. According to Chris Solarz, who last year set a Guinness World Record with 33,000 feet of stairs climbed in 12 hours and was ranked sixth in the world in 2010, you need at least 30 continuous floors for good training. That's roughly 650 steps. You'll probably have to settle for fewer in L.A.

The Aon building opens three times a week for climbers in the three months before the Fight for Air Climb in March, and the YMCA event, this year on Sept. 28, has a three-day-a-week training program that gradually ramps people up in successively taller buildings.

But getting access to stairs, up to 500 of them, may be easier outdoors. L.A. is one of the best cities in the country when it comes to a number of tall, always accessible outdoor stairways. For a list of the Top 10 stairways around town, we talked to Charles Fleming, a Times editor and author of "Secret Stairs: A Walking Guide to the Historic Staircases of Los Angeles" and double-checked the Los Angeles Stairs map at http://www.communitywalk.com.

3. Upper Bushnell-Pullman Stairways, Monterey Hills: 266 steps (two stairways, 126 steps and 140 steps, that are connected in an L shape; start at 5417 Bushnell Way and climb to the bottom of the Pullman Stairway at 5401 Monterey Road)